The Man Who Could Not Lose | Page 3

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Etext scanned by Aaron Cannon of Paradise, California

THE MAN WHO COULD NOT LOSE
by Richard Harding Davis

The Carters had married in haste and refused to repent at leisure. So
blindly were they in love, that they considered their marriage their
greatest asset. The rest of the world, as represented by mutual friends,
considered it the only thing that could be urged against either of them.
While single, each had been popular. As a bachelor, young "Champ"
Carter had filled his modest place acceptably. Hostesses sought him for
dinners and week-end parties, men of his own years, for golf and tennis,
and young girls liked him because when he talked to one of them he
never talked of himself, or let his eyes wander toward any other girl. He
had been
brought up by a rich father in an expensive way, and the rich father had
then died leaving Champneys alone in the world, with no money, and
with even a few of his father's debts. These debts of honor the son, ever
since leaving Yale, had been paying off. It had kept him very poor, for
Carter had elected to live by his pen, and, though he wrote very
carefully and slowly, the editors of the magazines had been equally
careful and slow in accepting what he wrote.
With an income so uncertain that the only thing that could be said of it
with certainty was that it was too small to support even himself, Carter
should not have thought of matrimony. Nor, must it be said to his credit,
did he think of it until the girl came along that he wanted to marry.
The trouble with Dolly Ingram was her mother. Her mother was a
really terrible person. She was quite impossible. She was a social leader,

and of such importance that visiting princes and society reporters, even
among themselves, did not laugh at her. Her visiting list was so small
that she did not keep a social secretary, but, it was said, wrote her
invitations herself. Stylites on his pillar was less exclusive. Nor did he
take his exalted but lonely position with less sense of humor. When
Ingram died and left her many millions to dispose of absolutely as she
pleased, even to the allowance she should give their daughter, he left
her with but one ambition unfulfilled. That was to marry her Dolly to
an English duke. Hungarian princes, French marquises, Italian counts,
German barons, Mrs. Ingram could not see. Her son-in-law must be a
duke. She had her eyes on two, one somewhat shopworn, and the other
a bankrupt; and in training, she had one just coming of age. Already
she saw her self a sort of a dowager duchess by marriage, discussing
with real dowager duchesses the way to bring up teething